Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
AstraZeneca, R&D Biopharmaceuticals, Biopharmaceutical Product Development, Analytical Sciences, Gaithersburg, MD, USA.
Anal Chim Acta. 2019 Nov 12;1081:138-145. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2019.07.007. Epub 2019 Jul 10.
Lot release and stability testing of biologics are essential parts of the quality control strategy for ensuring therapeutic material dosed to patients is safe and efficacious, and consistent with previous clinical and toxicological experience. Characterization of protein aggregation is of particular significance, as aggregates may lose the intrinsic pharmaceutical properties as well as engage with the immune system instigating undesirable downstream immunogenicity. While important, real-time identification and quantification of subvisible particles in the monoclonal antibody (mAb) drug products remains inaccessible with existing techniques due to limitations in measurement time, sensitivity or experimental conditions. Here, owing to its exquisite molecular specificity, non-perturbative nature and lack of sample preparation requirements, we propose label-free Raman spectroscopy in conjunction with multivariate analysis as a solution to this unmet need. By leveraging subtle, but consistent, differences in vibrational modes of the biologics, we have developed a support vector machine-based regression model that provides fast, accurate prediction for a wide range of protein aggregations. Moreover, in blinded experiments, the model shows the ability to precisely differentiate between aggregation levels in mAb like product samples pre- and post-isothermal incubation, where an increase in aggregate levels was experimentally determined. In addition to offering fresh insights into mAb like product-specific aggregation mechanisms that can improve engineering of new protein therapeutics, our results highlight the potential of Raman spectroscopy as an in-line analytical tool for monitoring protein particle formation.
生物制品的放行和稳定性测试是质量控制策略的重要组成部分,可确保给予患者的治疗材料安全有效,且与之前的临床和毒理学经验一致。蛋白质聚集的特性分析尤为重要,因为聚集物可能会失去内在的药物特性,并与免疫系统相互作用,引发不良的下游免疫原性。尽管实时识别和定量单克隆抗体 (mAb) 药物产品中的亚可见颗粒非常重要,但由于测量时间、灵敏度或实验条件的限制,现有技术仍然无法实现这一目标。在这里,由于其具有精细的分子特异性、非侵入性和无需样品制备要求,我们提出了无标记拉曼光谱结合多元分析作为满足这一未满足需求的解决方案。通过利用生物制品振动模式的细微但一致的差异,我们开发了一种基于支持向量机的回归模型,该模型能够快速、准确地预测广泛的蛋白质聚集。此外,在盲测实验中,该模型能够准确地区分等温孵育前后 mAb 样产品样品中的聚集水平,实验确定聚集水平增加。除了提供有关 mAb 样产品特定聚集机制的新见解,从而可以改进新型蛋白质治疗药物的工程设计外,我们的结果还突出了拉曼光谱作为在线分析工具监测蛋白质颗粒形成的潜力。